US producer Venture Global LNG has received a first commissioning cargo for its new Plaquemines facility in Louisiana.
The company posted a photo of the 174,000-cbm Qogir (built 2020) alongside a locater pin labelled Plaquemines.
The vessel arrived with volumes loaded at Norway’s Snohvit LNG plant.
On Friday, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted the liquefaction developer permission to start using nitrogen to test the plant.
This is commonly used to purge systems before introducing gas and then starting LNG production.
Venture Global’s own LNG carrier newbuilding, the 174,000-cbm Venture Gator, is lying close to the new facility in ballast, indicating that the company may use the ship to re-export cooldown volumes.
In July, the US Department of Energy granted Venture Global permission to re-export up to 6bn cubic feet of foreign-sourced LNG that the company plans to use for cooling its first liquefaction modules at Plaquemines.
Venture Global, which controls a fleet of nine LNG carriers, has indicated it may require several commissioning cargoes for the plant.
Plaquemines is Venture Global’s second LNG facility. The company is developing the 20m tonnes per annum project in two phases, kicking off with this first 13.3-mtpa stage.
Venture Global also operates the 12-mtpa Calcasieu Pass LNG project, which started exports in January 2022.
But the company is facing legal challenges from the offtakers for this plant after it refused to start the supply under their sales-and-purchase agreements until the facility achieves commercial operations.
